Forty Thousand in Gehenna by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t really fly, mind, they glide. The iridescence lasts as long as they live. You only see it in the photos, not in the lab specimens. They eat putative insects, they’re utterly harmless, and probably beneficial to the farming effort. They’ll cling to anything when they land, and you just disengage them gently and set them back on a branch. They’ll fly right back to the light. As long as there’s no trees near our camp lights, we won’t have trouble with flitters piling up there. But they’ll be all over you if you carry a light through the woods, and I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with vehicle headlights. It’s a shame to think of killing any of them. They’re far too beautiful. We’re going to try to devise something that might drive them off. Ideas are welcome.
    “Fish—beyond counting. Saltwater and freshwater. No poisons yet detected. Edible. We’ll want to be sure to stick to varieties that have already been tested; and bio will run tests on new species as they’re brought in. You’ll learn to recognize the species so you know what to eat and what to bring us.”
    “Microorganisms. We’re very fortunate in that regard. No one picked up a parasite. No one got sick. No one developed allergies, either. We don’t get careless, though. And particularly where you have mammal analogues, we don’t get careless. There’s a phenomenon we call biological resonance, for want of a better name. That’s when two worlds’ microorganisms set up housekeeping together and develop new traits over a period of years; when they cooperate. So—the medical staff is going to have a long lecture on this topic—you have to report every contact with a new lifeform, especially if you accidentally touch something, which is not a good idea. And you report every runny nose and every cough and every itch- We do have a biological isolation chamber we can set up. If someone turns out to be in really serious trouble and nothing else will work, we can put you in a bubble for three years until a ship comes back and lifts you off. Short of that we have antihistamines and all kinds of other alternatives, up to the autoimmune lot, so there’s no good becoming obsessive about the chance of contamination; but there’s no good being cavalier about things, either. If you drop down in a faint, it’s really helpful if you’ve already told us you got stung by something that morning or that you’d been digging down on the beach. You’re all going to have to keep your wits about you and be able to give a meticulous account of your whereabouts and your contacts with any and everything. The thing you forget to mention could be the key that we need to figure out what’s wrong with you. And that’s partly my business, because I have to form a picture of every ecosystem, so that if your contact with something harmful was on the beach, for instance, I have a good idea what to look for. And the faster I can answer questions, the safer you are. That’s why I have to ask everyone in the mission to be bio’s eyes and ears. Leave the hands and the touching to us, where you have any doubts. Humans can be compatible with all kinds of ecosystems; don’t kill anything, just move it over. This world doesn’t have any predators to argue with us; and we’ve got the construction sites planned so that eventually we’re going to intersperse urban development with wild areas and wildlife safeguards. The optimum development areas are also the optimum sites for some of the world’s most interesting inhabitants, and there’s no reason why protected habitat can’t exist side by side, theirs and ours. It has to do with attitude toward the wild. It has to do with knowledge and not fear. We’re not turning this world into Cyteen. We’re turning it into something uniquely its own. People who come here will be able to see the old world right along with the most modern development. Caliban habitat right in the middle of a city. Humans are